How to Deliver Natural Scares: Stephen Cognetti Talks ‘Hell House LLC: Lineage’

Haunted house attractions have been a staple of American culture since the late 60s, particularly during Halloween season. Disneyland’s The Haunted Mansion is a touchstone in scaring visitors in a visceral way. A few films have tackled the haunted house attraction setting, including The Houses October Built (2014) and Haunt (2019), but one of the most hairraising is Hell House LLC (2015) by filmmaker Stephen Cognetti. The film doesn’t go the slasher route but instead uses found footage format to investigate how the opening night of a haunted house attraction turned into a living nightmare for those in attendance and for those who put it together. The film was so popular that it spawned several sequels, with the latest one, Hell House LLC: Lineage, the fifth in the series, hitting theaters soon. Cognetti recently took time to speak with Script about his journey with the Hell House LLC series.

Cognetti, who studied film at Temple University, knew that as an indie filmmaker, he’d have to do things on his own terms for his first film. Doing short films was great prep for doing a feature.

“Short films are the best film school there is. I went to film school and I always encourage people to go, if they can. But not everyone can. We all have cameras in our pockets now, so shoot whatever you can, whenever you can. Don’t worry about the budget, don’t worry about what it looks like because just filming anything is a way to learn. You have to get a few short films under your belt before you take on a feature. You have to be able to know your way around a set. What people do. What their responsibility is. How a set functions on a small level where the stakes aren’t that high before you move on to a feature film where the stakes are higher. “

“You just put resources together anyway you can for a very small amount of money. We just went out and shot it. Very Blair Witch style. I knew that I was going to have to do it on my own. There was no studio that was going to back anything I did because I was unknown. It was going to have to be done very independently or not happen at all.”

When he wrote the first script in the series, he didn’t have any sequels in mind. Hell House LLC was its own independent idea inspired by his love of horror.

“I just had one script in mind but there was always more backstory. I thought that if somehow the film did well, there would be room to tell the backstory, but there was never a conscious effort of thinking there was going to be more.”

It also wasn’t written overnight. Cognetti took his time with it. He let it simmer before he came up with the definitive narrative style.

“It took me over a year,..might have almost been two years to write the first script. It didn’t start off as a found footage script, it was a narrative script. I didn’t like it that way. It just didn’t have that hook. I didn’t find it different or engaging. The story of Hell House told that narrative way. Then when I finally figured out the hook, which was going to be more of a faux documentary, I found that story much more compelling. Then I realized, ‘I might be able to shoot that with no money!’ (laughs) Those two ideas came together at the same time.”

In movies like The Haunting (1963), The Shining (1980), and Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971), setting is key. Cognetti knew he needed an environment that amplified his haunted house attraction and the Abbadon Hotel was perfect.

“When I finally finished the script, I knew I had to start looking for a location. I started looking for abandoned buildings. Then I realized that was a silly, dangerous, not well thought out thing to do…! (laughs) Then I started looking for places that were functioning but looked abandoned. Which led me to real haunted houses. A lot of these haunted houses are put in places where they’re meant to look spooky, meant to look abandoned. I reached out to a bunch of haunted attractions that I thought looked good. It was the Waldorf Estate of Fear owner Angie Moyer who responded favorably to me. We met and hit it off and that’s how I found that location.”

“Each film had a different cinematographer. There are now five Hell House films and each cinematographer has brought a different package. The first one was probably shot on the lowest grade camera because of the time. It was 2014. That was a mixture of GoPros. We didn’t get into 4K cameras until the third one. It has to be a camera that shoots high end enough but also is something the actors can hold and maneuver. So it couldn’t be anything complicated or heavy. The only time we shot on anything high end were the interview scenes.”

Cognetti knew when he was a child that he wanted to be a filmmaker. When he had toys, he would often pretend he was making films. Because he had older siblings, he was exposed to 80s horror at a younger age than he should have been. Many films influenced him, but James Cameron in particular captured his attention and imagination.

“There are films that affected me in the horror genre, then there are films that affected me in general to want to be a filmmaker. I think when I was a kid and I first realized what filmmaking was and what could be done, I was really wrapped into those James Cameron early action films like The Abyss, Aliens. They really turned me on to the wonder of filmmaking and how amazing it was. I remember when I was really little I admired James Cameron. Then as I got older, I watched every subsequent movie he made. For me, horror wise,  The Exorcist had a big effect on me. That’s what really made me think,  ‘Oh, horror filmmaking is really something that I love.’ In the 80s and early 90s is when I was coming of age. There was James Cameron, Steven Spielberg. They had an impact on everyone, including myself. Stephen King. I was reading him at a very young age. The Stand was my first Stephen King novel. I read The Stand in seventh grade so I was old enough to understand what was going on. After I read that, I read everything by him. He’s probably the biggest influence on me horror wise.”

Hell House LLC: Lineage is the fifth and last film in the series. Cognetti felt a certain amount of pressure wrapping things up and tying up loose ends.

“I had originally gone into Lineage thinking that Origins and Lineage were one and two films of what would be a trilogy. My first draft of Lineage was really intended to be the middle chapter of the trilogy. Then I realized that wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t going to do a sixth film, so I had to make five the final film. That influenced the rewriting process of how I incorporated some of the finishes I wanted to put in there. So, there was some pressure to end it as well as I could and to tie up as many loose ends as I could while also progressing the story. And also making it scary. “

“Whenever I sit down to write a script, the number one goal is to make it scary. If the scares aren’t there, then it’s really not worth getting into for me. The number one thing was to make sure this was a story that could carry the scares and terrify in the way that fans expect from a Hell House movie. It took me about six to eight months, maybe even close to a year, before it was locked. I started writing it right after Origins. I was very pleased with where I was. I was very excited to shoot it. I was excited because it wasn’t found footage. As a writer/filmmaker, I like freshness. I hate being repetitive, so I think a way to keep Hell House fresh is trying to scare people in a new way and I felt deviating from found footage was a way to make something different within the Hell House world.”

One of the most important parts of Cognetti’s writing process is the first draft. He doesn’t lean towards in-depth outlines like many. And when writing horror, three things have to be included.

“I don’t do intense outlines. I do my best writing just writing. Ideas and layers are going to come out better. The draft process is my favorite process. I write a draft of the script and that is the surface level of the script. I know every layer is going to get deeper and have more layers. But I can’t add those layers in outlines. I have no creative juices when I’m trying to outline. The first draft is my outline.”

“When writing horror, scares are the most important element. Then, the scares can only work if you have characters that people care about. Writing good characters is a tough thing to do. The third part is a good, cohesive, structured story people can follow and get behind. A good story for me starts off in that first act by having some mystery that makes the audience want to lean in more. “

There is a very Edgar Allan Poe-ish tune that threads throughout the series. Cognetti participated in creating the creepy ditty.

“There are two parts to it. The musical beats, the piano, and the lyrical beat. Gore Abrams, who plays Paul in the original, came up with the musical beats on set. We were getting ready to shoot the scene where he’s playing the piano. I do like to do a lot of things in scripts with setups and payoffs with scares. It’s a classic literary device, but I like to do it with the scares as well. We had the setup in the first act with Paul just playing the piano jingle. I told Gore it had to be simple enough but also something people will remember when they hear it later. When he came back and played it I said, “That’s perfect.” That’s a setup for when we hear it played later on, after Paul’s disappearance. It adds an extra level of spookiness. In the fourth one, when I was trying to flesh out more of the jingle, I put the lyrics to it. I was so excited. I sang it out loud, then I ran into my wife’s office and said, ‘Listen to this! It actually works!’ She agreed! “

The Hell House LLC series is currently on Shudder and Terror Films’ Hell House LLC: Lineage hits theaters on August 20.